Powerful Pictures That Prove The Past Was A Terrifying Time To Be Alive
It was a time of wild abandon and reckless adventures - the roaring 20s! Step back with us to an era of sheer glamour and a thirst for adventure. Flappers twirling around to their Charleston, bootleggers plunging into raucous freedom, and humanity floating on the brink of great conflict - it's all there, frozen in vintage photographs that transport you to those hazy days gone by when gentlemen were dapper and ladies daring. Read on and prepare your mind for a journey back through history; we guarantee you'll find yourself returning with a newfound appreciation for how far we've come!
Best First Date
Back in the '20s, young lovers dated online or rather, on-a-line. Here you can see a young couple on a pulley ride at a fair in London's Hampstead Heath in 1922.
This early form of recreational zip-lining looks dangerous when you consider that they aren't wearing any protective gear.
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New Invention To Stroll Around The Park
Roller skates were invented as early as the mid-1700s. Back then, roller skates were very much like inline skates but were hard to steer and stop, so they weren't very popular. But in 1913, pedal skates came along.
Charles A. Nordling of Suisun, California created this variation on the classic roller skate where the wheels were rotated on a pedal that was pushed by the person who wore them. This supposedly made it easier on the user, who wouldn't have to use so much energy and could actually manage to skate at a high speed.
Ancient Egyptian Hygiene Habits That Will Make You Grateful To Live In The 2020s
Working Children
This photo of a six-year-old newsboy was taken on May 9, 1910, in St. Louis, Missouri. Delivering newspapers was a common first job for children in this time period.
While some of them established routes to follow for their deliveries, others would sell papers on the street by yelling out the sensational headlines for passersby to hear.
Portable Jail Cell
In 1924, police forces began using motorcycles and needed a way to apprehend criminals on the go. This Los Angeles traffic policeman locked one up in his sidecar cell.
This method obviously didn't last long. It was pretty dangerous for the person in the sidecar cell, and most of the time, the cells gave the police unnecessary weight to lug around.
We're Glad This Has Stopped
These folks are gathered around to witness Eunice Winkless perform horse diving. In 1905, Winkless performed this stunt for a Fourth of July event.
The stunt woman dove from a 50-foot-high tower into a small pool while on horseback.
Pushing The Modesty Boundaries
In 1922, Colonel Sherrill, the Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds in Washington, D.C., issued an order that required all bathing suits worn on the beach must not be more than six inches above the knee.
These ladies here are having their suits measured. If this law was broken, a policeman could issue a warrant.
Do It For The Photo
This photo, taken in 1925, depicts a construction worker in New York City who decided to pull a daring stunt and walk on a construction girder twenty stories in the air while blindfolded.
Cameras were also the hip, new thing back in those days, and workers decided to have fun by posing for wild photos in mid-air like this one.
Walking On Water
These loggers are walking on a pile of logs that float in the middle of a river. This log jam on Minnesota's Littlefork River is being used to build a loading boom. At the time, booms were used to collect floating logs that have fallen into a body of water due to timbering in the neighboring forests.
By 1900, timber in the Midwest was dwindling, so loggers took to the Pacific Northwest. It wasn't long before resources became scarce but forests continued to get logged at a growing rate.
When Pigs Can Fly
Lieutenant-Colonel JTC Moore-Brabazon was a pioneer in English aviation. Perhaps when he was a boy telling people he wanted to fly planes, people scoffed and remarked, "when pigs fly."
Not only was Moore-Brabazon the first Englishman to pilot a heavier-than-air machine under power in England but he was also the first person to qualify as a pilot in the United Kingdom. On October 30, 1909, he also helped a pig fly, proving all of his naysayers wrong. To pull off the stunt, Moore-Brabazon put a small pig into a wastebasket and tied it to the wing-strut of his plane.
